How to Rank in Google Images Search [Complete Guide]

In past years, Google Image Search was a whole different game for SEO. Remember when you used to click on an image and went directly to the website that had such image?

Well, those days are gone. Now Google just opens a full-sized version of it, resulting in people just doing a bunch of searches but never actually visiting a website.

SEO is a time-consuming process where specialists ought to prioritize their time. Given this update, you might think image SEO is not even worth the try; You’re mistaken and I’m going to prove it to you.

Let’s begin by saying the numbers are astonishing: Almost 13% of all SERPs deliver Image Pack results and a third of all searches made on Google are for pictures. Nobody denies the relevance of Google Images, yet just a few SEO specialists bother to put some work into it.

Sit tight, because this post is going to be packed with all the image SEO tactics you could ever wish, from basic steps to advanced image SEO. I’m going to explain some key facts and methods of image SEO while also answering the most frequent questions I get.

What can I gain from doing Image Search SEO?

Fair question. Current image searches don’t redirect people to your website directly, so why even bother?

Well, remember image searches are usually part of peoples’ research before buying a product, especially visually sold ones, so architects, interior designers, hotel owners, and craft sellers are just a few examples of people who rely heavily on this type of SEO.

But the truth is, everyone could benefit from image SEO. As I’ll explain later on, image SEO can have a great impact on things like a web’s traffic, conversion rate, web result rankings, and more.

Our images are indexed in Google Images

Do I have to use original images?

Or ‘Can I use other peoples’ visuals?’ Your answer is yes, of course you can.

Duplicates are not a problem for Google Images. Unlike web result SEO, Google Image Searches will usually pick one version of a visual and rank it higher than the rest, but it doesn’t have to be the original. In fact, in most cases, the top-ranked images are not the originals. They come from pages that do a great image SEO. You just have to make sure you have the right permissions to use the image.

How do I know if I should be doing image SEO?

The right question is; what can you possibly lose by optimizing your images for SEO?

I mean it. Everyone should optimize their photos for SEO. It takes only a few minutes, yet the increase in web traffic can be surprising, especially if you do this for every single image on your site. Think of it this way; SEO specialists often overlook Image SEO, so it’s not a competitive field when compared to web results SEO. That means it’s actually easier to rank higher on images.

It’s also a very straightforward kind of SEO. When done correctly, image and website SEO will establish a ‘symbiotic’ relationship, so if a page is ranking high on images, chances are that it will boost your web result ranking as well.

How can I rank higher for Google Images?

Ranking elements for images are quite broad but not that complicated. If you’re used to SEO for web results, you’ll actually find them pretty basic.

The truth is Google Images doesn’t care so much about link popularity; it’s all about relevance. They don’t even worry as much about manipulation or spamming, so as you can see, they’re algorithm is sort of old-school.

So if we have a website with any type of visual on it, Google will use:

The actual name of the file.

Alt attributes. We don’t usually worry about this so much in web results SEO, but it’s actually very valuable for image search SEO.

The caption of the image. This is also something very important when it comes to Image Search SEO, even more so than alt attributes. Putting a little caption right below your image can be very helpful because Google’s algorithm cannot know what the content of the image is.

Surrounding text of the image. Google looks at all the text above and below to check for relevance.

The title of the page, clearly.

The URL of the page. Google actually prefers sites with one or two images per page that are super relevant to the content. You can tell that better-ranked images are usually the website’s main image on that particular page, that’s why pages with tons of pics (like galleries of images) tend to do poorly in the ranking.

Image popularity. This is one of the ultimate ranking factors. User engagement and popularity are very valuable for image SEO, so you should always have highly interesting and high-quality content. Google will take notice of the engagement every single image on your site has, including your logo.

The dimensions of the image. Google looks for conventional dimensions, so try to always post images that are somewhat square, like 4 by 3 or 16 by 9. Very horizontal or vertical images tend not to do very well.

The size of the image. Google usually does not care for tiny images, but they also don’t show very big ones either. The exception being searched like ‘wallpaper’, in that case Google actually knows that you’re seeking for gigantic sizes, so they’ll show you that.

Embeds. So if your image appears on a lot of websites and pages, and it was embedded many times, that will certainly boost you in the ranking.

Conventional ranking elements on the existing URL. It appears to be a link between web and image results, so if your page ranks in the top five of a given search, chances are you’re going to rank highly on Google Images as well. That means you’ll get more traffic from both, so it’s definitely a win-win situation.

Which are the steps for image SEO?

If you really want to make it right, you should probably…

1. Set a list of SEO goals and then compare those goals with your keyword research list.

2. Check your keyword research tool for images. You can use Keyword Explorer for this, as it’s probably one of the best tools to do it right now. Basically, you just set all your keywords and go to your list page. Then you check which results actually have image blocks within them, that way you’ll get a sense of the opportunities you’ve got.

After you audit, compare your opportunities with your goals, if they match, go ahead.

3. Set some guidelines for content creators on your website. Remember all the factors I just gave you. Ensure all your content creators know you’re doing image SEO and they have to adhere to these norms. Give them all the information you can, like the type of caption you want or the alt attributes.

4.Develop a list of image SEO opportunities. Pick the top 5 or 10 keywords (depending on how big of a project you can handle) to pursue. Clearly, you should choose images with lots of searches

We welcome SEO experts to write for our audience. Now you can write for us and get published in Monetize.info magazine.

About StephanJ

Stephan J is the founder of Monetize.info and is making a living exclusively online since 2004. He tried and managed to make good profits on everything from Forex trading, options, website flipping, adsense, affiliate websites.His passions are cycling, fitness and he is spending a small fortune on watches and fine cigars

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